DENVER — Seemingly on their way to a blowout road
loss, the Mavericks salvaged something out of this Saturday night, albeit in a
102-100 loss to Denver.

Dallas fell behind by 17 points in the Pepsi Center and seemed to be wheezing
in the altitude and dragging on the second night of a back-to-back.

Coach Rick Carlisle got ejected in the second quarter. Veteran Vince Carter
broke out of a shooting slump in the third period, the Mavericks clawed back to
take the lead and had two shots to tie the game in the final 15 seconds.

“The second night of a back-to-back in Denver, altitude and all that stuff
and 17 down, some teams maybe just let it go,” point guard Jose Calderon said.
“But we’re not like that. This is not a team that’s just going to let it go.
We’re going to keep fighting until the end.”

The record shows that the Mavericks are a flawless 7-0 and home and a flawed
2-5 on the road. In reality, they are somewhere in-between.

In actuality, this game was probably lost Friday night, when the Mavericks
squandered much of a 28-point lead at home against Utah and wound up having to
play starters in the fourth quarter to hold the Jazz off.

Denver, meanwhile, had not played since soundly beating Chicago on
Thursday.

“I thought we were garbage in the first half,” said Dirk Nowitzki, adding
that “we’ll never know,” if the Utah letdown lead to this loss.

Trailing 102-100 after Denver’s Kenneth Faried made 1-of-2 free throws with
14.7 seconds left, the Mavericks had two chances to tie. Monta Ellis missed a
driving layup with eight seconds left, but Denver knocked the ball out of
bounds.

After the inbound, Carter appeared to have an open look, but hesitated, got
pushed out of his shooting zone and passed to Nowitzki, who missed a 22-footer
with two seconds left.

“Tough game,” said Ellis, whose 25 points was second only to Nowitzki’s 27.
“We did everything we could to get back in the game and take the lead.

“We missed shots we could have made at the end, but there’s nothing we can
do. Can’t hang our head.”

Carlisle didn’t even make it through the first half. With 5:14 remaining in
the second quarter and his team trailing, 48-33, Carlisle stepped onto the court
to argue that Randy Foye should have been called for a flagrant foul after
landing on Ellis.

As assistant coach Monte Mathis tried to pull him back, Carlisle kept
barking, received another technical and an automatic ejection. It certainly
looked like that was his intent.

“I thought the foul was excessive,” Carlisle said. “I thought he fouled him,
and then he came down on him extra hard and I’m going to stand up for my
players.”

Initially, Carlisle’s stand seemed to have little effect. Denver extended the
lead to its largest of the night, 57-40, on a Foye 3-pointer with 4:02 left in
the second quarter. But Dallas pulled within 65-53 at halftime, and Carter (16
points) broke out of a shooting slump with eight third-quarter points.

“I know Coach was very mad about [the hard foul],” Ellis said. “That’s why we
fought so hard to get back into the game, because he did a lot to get thrown
out, so I think we owed that to him.

“Even though we weren’t playing good ball, when he did that I think we got a
spark.

Carter came into Saturday shooting 11-for-31 in the last four games. Through
one half against the Nuggets, Carter was 1-for-7.

But in the third quarter, Carter was 3-of-4 shooting. His 3-pointer with 29
seconds left, and a DeJuan Blair layup pulled Dallas within 86-80 entering the
fourth quarter.

A Carter 3-pointer with 10:05 left in the game pulled the Mavericks within
86-85. And when Ellis sank a jumper with 7:25 left, it gave Dallas its first
lead since 16-15.

En route to a 65-53 halftime lead, the Nuggets outrebounded Dallas 27-14 and
had eight second-chance points to Dallas’ zero. Faried had four first-half
offensive rebounds to Dallas’ two.

Perhaps Carlisle could no longer bear watching the Nuggets drive around
flat-footed Dallas defenders, or, more likely, he wanted to inject some fire
into his team. Whatever his motive, he got his point across and stalked to the
locker room, for the rest of the game.

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